Data boundary manager for addressable advertising

ABSTRACT

A server receives a source signal stream comprising metadata and an advertisement space. The server extracts from the metadata a channel identifier, a private client identifier, and personal identifiable information about an intended audience of interest to advertisers. The server identifies at least one anonymous statistic of a national market and a placement opportunity including an owner of the advertisement space, the at least one anonymous statistic of a national market based in part on the channel identifier and the personal identifiable information. The server purges the personal identifiable information about the intended audience when the owner of the advertisement space is identified as a national network. The server targets an advertisement decision to the intended audience based on the at least one anonymous statistic of a national market.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of and is a continuation of U.S.patent application Ser. No. 13/444,303 filed Apr. 11, 2012, thedisclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to service provider videonetworks, and more particularly to a method and system for managinginformation related to an intended audience for advertising placementsin signal streams.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In the cable television industry there are at least two types oforganizations capable of selling advertisement space. One is aprogramming network (e.g., NBC, ABC, CBS, TBS, etc.) and the other isthe local cable service provider (e.g., Comcast, Time Warner, etc.).Some service providers fall somewhere between the two, generallyreferred to as Multiple System/Service Operators (MSO—a cable TVorganization that owns more than one cable system and may provebroadband Internet service). Programming networks sell advertising spacethat may appear in every market (i.e., nationally or regionally)regardless of the identity of the cable operator or MSO.

An MSO may sell advertisement space directed to local or regionalbusinesses, and can target or swap out national advertisements for localor regional market ads. In addition, MSOs own or can locate individualsubscriber set top boxes, and can target local advertisements for allsubscribers in a region, town, or down to a specific subscriber.Advertisements targeted to particular intended audiences are madepossible when the MSO gains access to personal identifiable information(PII) about their subscribers, made available within set top boxes orvia the Internet. PII may include the location of a set top boxincluding its hardware MAC address, marketing information, such as whichprograms and commercials have been viewed, and direct subscriberpersonal information such as a subscriber's name, home address,subscription or order history, and credit score.

This information is private yet valuable to advertisers, both MSOs andnational networks included. A national network may approach an MSO toswap in and out Video-On-Demand (VOD) advertisements using an MSO'sdynamic advertisement insertion capabilities and may obtain PII data inorder to enhance revenues. The MSO, in turn, can charge a premium to thenational network for PII.

There are at least two barriers generally preventing an MSO fromrevealing PII: one legal and the other monetary. Legally, an MSO cannotreveal PII that can identify a specific individual. Commercially, anational network that gains access to a local or regional marketprovides may threaten the MSO's own local media business. An MSO may notwant to give away local or regional information because the MSO does notwant to have a national network, with its wide-ranging resources,competing with their local media sales. For example, if a networkobtains information about subscribers in the New York metropolitan area,then the national network may begin selling ads for a premium tocompanies that are only in the New York metropolitan area, which a localadvertiser may not be able to afford. However, it may be possible for anMSO to satisfy all parties, both legally and commercially, by purgingcertain PII that identifies an individual subscriber or other local orregional market information but still provide certain national-levelstatistical demographic information, e.g., the number of people who aremale or have a certain income level.

Accordingly, what would be desirable, but has not yet been provided, isa method and system for filtering personal identifiable or regionalinformation about cable subscribers while providing certain statisticalinformation to national networks.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The above-described problems are addressed and a technical solution isachieved in the art by providing a computer implemented method andsystem for managing audience data for advertisement placements. A serverreceives a source signal stream comprising metadata and an advertisementspace. The server extracts from the metadata a channel identifier, aprivate client identifier, and personal identifiable information aboutan intended audience of interest to advertisers. The server identifiesat least one anonymous statistic of a national market and a placementopportunity including an owner of the advertisement space, the at leastone anonymous statistic of a national market based in part on thechannel identifier and the personal identifiable information. The serverpurges the personal identifiable information about the intended audiencewhen the owner of the advertisement space is identified as a nationalnetwork. The server targets an advertisement decision to the intendedaudience based on the at least one anonymous statistic of a nationalmarket. The server identifies an amount of information about theintended audience to purge and subsequently to fetch for the nationalnetwork based on a business arrangement between the national network anda service provider, which the server enforces and enables.

In an embodiment, the server may target the advertisement decision tothe intended audience based on the remaining extracted information aboutthe intended audience. The remaining extracted information about theintended audience may be at least one statistic of a national market.The at least one statistic may be made available only to the nationalnetwork for a predetermined period of time. The national network may becharged for the at least one statistic. The premium charged may be basedon at least one of by network, by show, by time, and by device.

The purged information about the intended audience may be personalidentifiable information that identifies an individual person. Thepersonal identifiable information may include at least one of a hardwareMAC address, a name, a post office address, a subscription or an orderhistory, and a credit score. The purged information about the intendedaudience may identify a market associated with a regional or localservice provider. In one embodiment, the server may be configured toprovide compensation to the regional or local service provider from thenational network in exchange for permitting the national network to haveaccess to the information that identifies the market associated with theregional or local service provider.

In one embodiment, identifying an owner of the advertisement space basedon the channel identifier comprises transmitting the channel identifierto an ad management service and receiving, from the ad managementservice, a client identifier. The server may then transmit the clientidentifier and the channel identifier to a subscriber informationservice and receive, from the subscriber information service, a list ofaudience qualifiers including the extracted information about theintended audience correlated to the client identifier and the channelidentifier. Purging at least some of the extracted information about theintended audience may include purging at least some of the audiencequalifiers that identify an individual person or identifies a marketassociated with a regional or local service provider.

In one embodiment, identifying a placement opportunity in theadvertisement space based on remaining extracted information about theintended audience may include transmitting, to an ad decision service ora Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST), an ad call for each elementof the list of audience qualifiers remaining after purging and thechannel identifier and receiving, from the ad decision service or theVAST, at least one advertisement targeted to the intended audience.

In one embodiment, requesting an advertisement decision based on theplacement opportunity identified may include associating a unique signalID with the at least one each targeted advertisement and transmittingthe at least one targeted advertisements to a client.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention will be more readily understood from the detaileddescription of exemplary embodiments presented below considered inconjunction with the attached drawings, of which:

FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional linear or video-on-demand model foradvertisement placement;

FIG. 2 depicts a configuration of a conventional Internet-based cabletelevision infrastructure for performing advertising placement decisionsin signal streams;

FIG. 3 depicts a configuration of a system for managing audience datafor advertisement placements in network signal streams, according to anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a method formanaging audience data for advertisement placements, according to anembodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 5 illustrates a diagrammatic representation of a machine in theexemplary form of a computer system within which a set of instructions,for causing the machine to perform any one or more of the methodologiesdiscussed herein, may be executed.

It is to be understood that the attached drawings are for purposes ofillustrating the concepts of the invention and may not be to scale.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Traditionally, programming of broadcast and cable television and radio,including content (i.e., the video or audio program) and (the placementof) advertisements in a video or audio signal stream, has followed alinear model. Programming may be linear in the sense that a programbegins and is streamed and in progress when a user chooses to viewentertainment content. FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional linear orvideo-on-demand (VOD) model for advertisement placement. Entertainmentcontent 2, when processed as a digital data stream over a cable network,may be divided into a number of time intervals. The time intervals 4include time reserved for a viewed program (content), such as “GoldenGirls.” The intervals 6, 8, 10, represent sections of time reserved foradvertisements or “avails.” These “avails” may be viewed asadvertisement placement opportunities. As used herein, a “placementopportunity” was traditional called an avail and is sometimes referredto as a slot (spots into slots). A placement opportunity (PO) is aconstruct that represents an opportunity to insert an advertisement orentertainment content, and defines the rules for that opportunity, suchas its duration, interactivity, ownership, and technical constraints.

In linear over-the-air or traditional cable TV broadcasting, each of theintervals 6, 8, 10 are known as breaks with no distinction of ordering.Advertisement time may occur before, during, or after the intervals 4 inthe breaks, each break comprising a “pod,” each “pod” containing one ormore “avails.” The list of programs and breaks may be received by aservice provider in a schedule, and may provide additional informationas to which entity, e.g., a network, an operator, or other entity, ownseach of the avails. A traffic and billing system then reads the scheduleand identifies which network, operator, or other entity has the right toplace an advertisement during a particular avail of a given pod during agiven break. Existing cable systems provide static sales—e.g., a 30second spot in a particular geographic market which may be inserted intoone or more of the breaks 6, 8, 10.

In non-linear systems, such as Video-on-Demand (VOD), the intervals 6,8, 10 may take on new meanings. The interval 6 is called a pre-roll,i.e., the space in a video that occurs immediately after a user clicksto start a VOD video. The interval 10 is known as a post-roll, i.e., thespace after all of the VOD video segments have finished playing. Theintervals 8 may be mid-rolls, i.e., mini-breaks in the middle of a VODvideo, or may be interstitials, i.e., pod-like locations betweenconsecutive VOD video segments. VOD advertisement placementopportunities may appear based on space, time, content, and user contextand may be highly non-linear (i.e., the user chooses to initiate theplaying of content and in response, the content starts). All of theintervals 6, 8, 10 in such play lists are ripe for the insertion ofadvertisements, i.e., advertisement placement opportunities.

As used herein, the term “binding” refers to an identification ofsignals and content within a placement opportunity (PO). PO's arefrequently created for broad amounts of content that are not yetpublished (i.e., any show on TNT network in the evening). When the showairs and a signal is detected, the signal is bound to the relevant PO'sfor that show.

As used herein, the term “impression” refers to a showing of an ad to asingle viewer. For example, if a 30 second spot is placed in 50,000video-on-demand (VOD) streams and it is known that 30,000 of the streamsactually played the ad, then 30,000 impressions of that ad have beengenerated.

As used herein, a “status notification” may be, but is not limited to,an HTTP call from a VOD server with a unique ID that was created when adecision was delivered.

As used herein, the term “break” refers to all of the space in a streambetween entertainment content. For example, a group of 4 consecutive 30second spots between 2 segments of “Two and a Half Men” may beconsidered as a single break.

In the traditional model for the placement of ads in televisionprogramming, avails are specified by a simple combination of channel andtime and decided weeks ahead of broadcast. However, new cable contentdelivery systems permit advertising spots of varying duration, permitdifferent levels of interactivity (e.g., polling or linking) through theuse of buttons on a remote control, may be defined by geography, etc. Ina world where TV viewing is becoming increasingly non-linear (e.g.,video-on-demand (VOD), networked-based personal video recorders (PVR),interactive programs), a key goal of advertisement opportunity placementsystems is to determine how to define placement opportunities that arenon-deterministic and manifest dynamically. Advanced advertising needsto accommodate advertisement placement opportunities that are invoked byuser events, which may include anything from playback of a VOD title topausing one's DVR. As the scope of potential placement opportunitiesexpands accordingly, it becomes necessary to precisely define thoseplacement opportunities with attributes representing relevant businessrules. These may be used to specify such things as inventory splits,quantity, duration, and position of ad breaks (pre-roll, mid-roll,post-roll); placement of pause ads and overlays; and levels and types ofinteractivity.

On the Internet, a content publisher and an advertiser may be isolatedfrom one another, with an advertising network acting as an intermediary.On TV, the advertising network was formerly the national network, thecable network, or the cable operator, that had fixed avails. However,emerging advanced advertising standards for dynamic television providean opportunity for content providers to derive value from a cableoperator's ad placement infrastructure by creating new and more flexibleadvertising inventory (i.e., Potential Viewership*PlacementOpportunities=Advertising Inventory). This new business model imposesunique technical challenges: unlike the Internet, where browsersaccess/display content and then are separately “referred” to a shared adnetwork, the cable television infrastructure selects and assembles boththe advertisement and the content together in the network and deliversthe combined result to customers' set top boxes. For this to work, cabletelevision advanced advertising networks may need to at least partiallyoperate within the infrastructure of an MSO. To achieve optimaladdressability and user experience and achieve bandwidth efficiencies,advertising service elements and digital delivery components need to belocated close to the edge of a network, i.e., at or near set top boxes.Decisions need to be made based upon relevant context (infrastructure,platform, content, geography, demographics, etc), which are applicableto non advertisements as well (e.g., suggested content). By makingplacement decisions and insertions at the time of a user request—or evenat the appropriate times during content playout—fully dynamic adplacement may be achieved.

Certain embodiments of the present invention are compatible with andmake use of elements defined according to the SCTE-130 standard. TheSCTE-130 standard provides a standardized and extensible message basedinterface defining a minimal set of cooperating logical servicesnecessary to communicate placement opportunities, placement decisions,and placement related event data necessary for accountabilitymeasurements. SCTE-130 defines an extensible framework of interfacesamong a set of advertising system logical services. The SCTE-130standard encompasses: a minimal set of cooperative logical servicesneeded to implement advanced addressable advertising systems; the coredata types and extensible message framework forming a vocabulary neededto communicate among the defined logical services; the interfaces amongthese logical services using the core data types and messages; and,mechanisms for extensibility that allow innovation while preservingbackward compatibility with already deployed systems—thereby reducingthe complexity for incorporating new features within the standard.

The normative parts of the SCTE-130 standard define mechanisms forintegrating systems implementing features such as VOD-based advertising,linear-based advertising, enhanced advertising capabilities such as adrotation groups (rotation groups refer to placement opportunities thatrun in rotation so that the same add is not viewed again immediately),subscriber-based addressing for advertising or content tailoring,extension points for more advanced advertising or addressing features,logical services that are implemented as one or more physical systemscreated by the same vendor, deployment of a logical service that maysimultaneously include systems from one or more vendors, and animplementation that may incorporate one or more of the defined logicalservices and interfaces

The SCTE-130 standard defines a set of logical services comprising anadvanced advertising system. Each logical service may itself be acomplex system. In an embodiment, one or more of the following logicalservices may be used by or interact with certain embodiments of thepresent invention.

An Ad Management Service (ADM) defines messages in support of adinsertion activities. The primary consumer of these messages is an AdDecision Service (ADS). The message interfaces exposed by an ADM permitboth pre-configured ad decisions as well as real-time fulfillmentmodels. An ADM implementation may incorporate some simple ad selectionrules (e.g., ad rotations) but more complex ad decisions are theresponsibility of an ADS.

An Ad Decision Service (ADS) determines how advertising content iscombined with non-advertising (i.e., entertainment) content assets. Thedecisions made by an ADS may be straightforward (i.e., specific adcontent placed at a specific time in a specific asset) or arbitrarilycomplex (based on subscriber data, advertising zone, etc.).

A Content Information Service (CIS) manages metadata describing assets(both advertising assets and non-advertising assets) available to theother SCTE-130 logical services. The CIS provides query and notificationinterfaces to the other logical services. The query service is availableon an ad-hoc basis and may be called by any other logical service at anytime without any prior registration. Queries specify values or patternsto be sought in the query message metadata and the specified matchinginformation (or an error indication) is returned in a response message.

The Content Information Service (CIS) is a storage and distributionengine. It stores metadata about entertainment and advertising assets;provides notifications to registered clients when metadata is modified;registers, receives and processes notifications from other CIS services;and supports real-time metadata queries. The CIS permits an AdvertisingManager (ADM) and/or Ad Decision Service (ADS) to retrieve and utilizecontent metadata in their advanced advertising decision processing.

A Placement Opportunity Information Service (POIS) may hold, maintain,and retain descriptions of placement opportunities. The POIS may alsocontain attributes and constraints for each placement opportunity,platform compliance, rights, and policies of the content in which theplacement opportunity exists. These placement opportunities are contentspecific, therefore attributes and constraints may vary by network,geographic region, or other content distribution dimension.

The POIS is a Placement Opportunity (PO) storage and inventory executionengine. It stores PO metadata and statistics; provides notifications toregistered clients when PO metadata is modified; registers, receives andprocesses notifications from other POIS services; and supports real-timePO metadata queries. Through the POIS appliance, an Advertising Manager(ADM) and/or Ad Decision Service (ADS) can retrieve and utilizeplacement opportunity metadata in their advanced advertising decisionmaking.

The Subscriber Information Service (SIS) manages per-subscriberinformation relevant to ad placement decisions. The SIS provides amapping between subscriber or client identifiers, such as a MAC address,serial number, etc., and subscriber or audience attributes, e.g., age,sex, location of a subscriber.

The term “computer” or “computer platform” is intended to include anydata processing device, such as a desktop computer, a laptop computer, atablet computer, a mainframe computer, a server, a handheld device, adigital signal processor (DSP), an embedded processor (an example ofwhich is described in connection with FIG. 5), or any other device ableto process data. The computer/computer platform is configured to includeone or more microprocessors communicatively connected to one or morenon-transitory computer-readable media and one or more networks. Theterm “communicatively connected” is intended to include any type ofconnection, whether wired or wireless, in which data may becommunicated. The term “communicatively connected” is intended toinclude, but not limited to, a connection between devices and/orprograms within a single computer or between devices and/or separatecomputers over a network. The term “network” is intended to include, butnot limited to, OTA (over-the-air transmission, ATSC, DVB-T),packet-switched networks (TCP/IP, e.g., the Internet), satellite(microwave, MPEG transport stream or IP), direct broadcast satellite,analog cable transmission systems (RF), and digital video transmissionsystems (ATSC, HD-SDI, HDMI, DVI, VGA), etc.

FIG. 2 depicts a configuration of a conventional Internet-based cabletelevision infrastructure 200 for performing advertising placementdecisions in signal streams. On TV, the advertising network was formerlythe national network, the cable network, or the cable operator. However,unlike the Internet, where browsers access/display content and then areseparately “referred” to a shared advertisement network, theInternet-based cable television infrastructure 200 selects and assemblesboth the advertisement and the content together and delivers thecombined result to customers' “smart appliances” 202 a-202 n (e.g.,Internet ready televisions, radios, smartphones, tablets, PCs, etc.).

Recently, smart appliances 202 a-202 n, such as Internet-readytelevisions, have become capable of receiving content from Internetstreaming services, such as Netflix movies, Pandora streaming radio,etc., over WiFi or direct Ethernet connections. When a user clicks on anicon for an “app” that appears on the television set corresponding toone of these services, the content is streamed to the smart appliance202 a-202 n from a content delivery network (CDN) 204 directly to theapplication running in the smart appliance 202 a-202 n without the needfor a set top box.

A set top box may be configured to decode an analog representation oftwo states of a digital signal, as is known in the art, that iscontinuously streamed and pushed to the set top box through a broadcastfacility over a coaxial or fiber optic cable and the set top box tunesto that channel and displays the content. When a user watchesInternet-delivered program content, a browser within the smart appliance202 a-202 n fetching video in predetermined time chunks—generally twosometimes three, sometimes ten second chunks. The fetched chunks ofvideo are seamlessly stitched together dynamically in the app softwareand then displayed so as to appear as a smooth video on the smartappliance 202 a-202 n.

The MSO may wish to rebroadcast video streams on smart appliances.Unfortunately, every connected device, including smart appliances, needsto obtain video in the format that it can consume. Apple, Microsoft,Adobe, etc., have very specific and incompatible formats. To overcomethis problem, each of these companies has constructed facilities calledcontent deliver networks (CDN) 204 where a “set top box” for eachchannel is configured to receive broadcasts from satellites. A signalreceived by a “set top box” from upstream devices 206 is fed to atranscoder 208 to place the signal in a desired format and to fragmentthe formatted signal into the predetermined (e.g., 2 second) chunks ofdata. These chunks are then stored at the CDN 204 on server farmslocated physically close to where the content is to be delivered.

To identify a particular channel data stream, including times when aprogram has ended and before the next program begins, i.e., a placementopportunity, a q-tone is inserted in the digital stream a predeterminedtime before the next program begins. An observer 210, which may be thetranscoder 208, informs an ad service (ADS) 212 of the arrival of theq-tone for subsequent placement of one or more advertisements into thechannel data stream. The ad service 210, in turn, is waiting for thesubsequent arrival of requests from CDNs 204 to place advertisementsinto breaks in the data stream.

FIG. 3 depicts a configuration of a system 300 for managing audiencedata for advertisement placements in network signal streams, accordingto an embodiment of the present invention. The system 300 may beexecuted on a server 302, interconnected by one or more networks (notshown) communicatively connected to ADSs 304 a-304 n. The ADSs 304 a-304n are configured to place advertisements into breaks in a data at therequest of a CDN 306.

The server 302 is configured to communicate with a CIS 308 for receivingone or more source signal streams (e.g., digital video, audio, etc.)from upstream devices 310 and corresponding q-tones (i.e., instances ofSCTE-35 packets) from one or more observers 312, which may beincorporated within a transcoder 314. The transcoder 314 is alsoconfigured to deliver IP video, audio, etc., in predetermined “chunks”to the CDN 306 as described above.

The CIS 308 is also configured to extract metadata from the one or moresource signal streams and from these pre-allocate a corresponding numberof unconfirmed placement opportunities without signals and to bind thesource signal stream to a plurality of premade, but unconfirmedplacement opportunities. Part of the extracted metadata includes achannel identifier associated with a corresponding source signal stream.

A POIS 316 is configured to “confirm” unconfirmed placementopportunities by identifying temporal starting locations of theunconfirmed placement opportunities relative to both the content streamand a wall clock. The POIS 316 is configured to return a globally uniquevalue, a UUID, referred to as a signal identifier or signal ID thatuniquely identifies a PO as a confirmed PO and its starting locationwithin the end-to-end operational system 300. The POIS 316 then insertsthe signal ID and the channel identifier into other extracted metadataof the source signal stream using the appropriate in-band carriageformat.

The server 302 also comprises an ADM 318. The ADM 318 is configured toidentify an owner of a signal stream (a network or local/regionalchannel) having the channel identifier and at least one audienceattribute (PII or local/regional market information). To identify theowner of the signal stream and the at least one audience attribute, theADM 318 places a call to an external session manager 320. The ADM 318transmits the channel identifier to the session manager 320, whichprovides the ADM 318 with a list of client identities indicative of anumber of recipients currently viewing an identified channel ownedeither by a national network or a local or regional entity. The ADM 318transmits the list of client identities and the channel identifier tothe SIS 322, which provides the ADM 318 with a list of sets of audiencequalifiers correlated to the client identities and the channelidentifier. This list of sets of audience qualifiers correlated to theclient identities and the channel identifier is representative of a listof recipient signal streams having the same channel identifier that arecurrently being “watched” by subscribers, where each subscriber in thelist has a certain set of audience attributes (e.g., PII such as ahardware MAC address, a name, a post office address, a subscription oran order history, and a credit score). The audience attributes may alsobe indicative of information concerning a market associated with aregional or local service provider (e.g., all males 21 and over in atown or region).

The ADM 318 is also configured to obtain a plurality of targetedadvertisements corresponding to the list sets of audience qualifierscorrelated to the client identities and the channel identifier from theone or more ADSs 304 a-304 n. The ADM 318 receives, from the ADSs 304a-304 n, the plurality of advertisements targeted to the listrepresentative of the plurality of recipient signal streams.

The ADM 318 uses the signal ID plus a set of locally configured orlearned targeting criteria to initiate a unique set of ad decisionrequests. The ad decision requests evolve into targeted ad decisionrequests to the appropriate decision owners and the results are a set ofad placement decisions correlating to the placement opportunitiesgenerated as a result of signal confirmation.

The ADM 318 is also configured to forward the obtained list of targetedadvertisements to the one or more ADSs 304 a-304 n with PII orlocal/regional marketing information at least partially removed by anintervening data boundary manager 326 according to a set of rulesprogrammed into the data boundary manager 326.

The CDN 306, in turn, inserts a predetermined list of ads intocorresponding placement opportunities by placing ad calls to the one ormore ADSs 304 a-304 n, the latter providing a list of ad decisionspurged of PII or local/regional marketing information for ultimatedelivery to smart devices (SD) 330 a-330 n.

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of a method 400 formanaging advertisement placements, according to an embodiment of thepresent invention. At block 405, the server 302 receives a source signalstream comprising metadata and an advertisement space. Moreparticularly, the CIS 308 associated with the server 302 receives thesource signal stream (e.g., in MPEG-2 format) from the upstream devices310. At block 410, the CIS 308 extracts and forwards to the server 302the metadata embedded within the source signal stream to the ADM 318within the server 302. The extracted metadata includes a channelidentifier and information about an intended audience of interest toadvertisers. At block 415, the ADM 318 of the server 302 identifies aplacement opportunity including an owner of the advertisement space(e.g., TBS (a network)) based on the channel identifier. Moreparticularly, the ADM 318 obtains the identity of the owner of theadvertisement space from the session manager 320 with the channelidentifier employed as input. The ADM 318 identifies a placementopportunity from the POIS 316 described below.

At about the same time, a transcoder 314 associated with a specificvendor format for the source signal stream (e.g., TBS) receives thesignal stream and converts the signal stream to IP video. The observer312 of the transcoder 314 then places a web call to the CIS 308 toinform the CIS 308 that the q-tone for a specific channel ID has beenobserved.

The arrival of the SCTE-35 packet is an indication of a number oftheoretical placement opportunities (POs) for the specified channel ID(e.g., TBS). Each unconfirmed PO has an estimated starting locationknown as a signal point. The signal point needs to be confirmed. When anactual ad insertion starting location is encountered in real-time, asoftware process in the POIS 316 confirms the actual time of the signalpoint. This confirmed signal point results in the generation ofconfirmed POs that are now ready for ad insertion.

When the CIS 308 receives the theoretical placement opportunities, theCIS 308 is configured to pre-allocate a corresponding number ofunconfirmed placement opportunities without signals and to bind thesource signal stream to a plurality of premade, but unconfirmedplacement opportunities. Binding the source signal stream to a pluralityof premade, but unconfirmed placement opportunities includes the CIS 308extracting metadata including the channel identifier from the sourcesignal stream.

As content is acquired by the CDN 306, the CDN 306 notifies the POIS316, and the POIS 316 “confirms” the temporal starting location of aplacement opportunity relative to both the source signal stream and awall clock. The POIS 316 returns a globally unique value, a UUID,referred to as a signal identifier or signal ID that uniquely identifiesa PO as a confirmed PO and its starting location within the end-to-endoperational system. The POIS 316 then inserts the signal ID and thechannel identifier into other extracted metadata of the source signalstream using the appropriate in-band carriage format.

At block 420, the ADM 318 of the server 302 employs the embedded databoundary manager 326 to purge at least some of the extracted informationabout the intended audience when the owner of the advertisement space isidentified as a national network. At block 425, the server 302identifies an amount of information about an intended audience to purgeand subsequently to fetch for the national network based on a businessarrangement between the national network and a service provider.

Purging at least some of the extracted information about the intendedaudience may include purging at least some audience qualifiers thatidentify an individual person or identifies a market associated with aregional or local service provider. Audience qualifiers that identify anindividual person may include personal identifiable information (PII)described above, which, for example, may include a hardware MAC address,a name, a post office address, a subscription or an order history, or acredit score associated with an individual person. To identify and purgePII or regional or local marketing information, the data boundarymanager 326 may be programmed according to a set of rules.

To identify the owner of the advertisement space, the ADM 318 of theserver 302 transmits the channel identifier to the session manager 320,which provides the ADM 318 with a list of client identities indicativeof a number of recipients currently viewing an identified channel ownedeither by a national network or a local or regional entity. ADM 318transmits the list of client identities and the channel identifier tothe SIS 322 which provides the ADM 318 with a list of sets of audiencequalifiers correlated to the client identities and the channelidentifier. This list of sets of audience qualifiers correlated to theclient identities and the channel identifier is representative of a listof recipient signal streams having the same channel identifier that arecurrently being “watched” by subscribers on the smart devices 330 a-330n, where each subscriber in the list has a certain set of audienceattributes, which may include PII and/or regional or local marketinginformation that may pose a threat to an MSO's regional or localadvertisers.

If the owner of the advertisement space is a national network, the ADM318 transmits the list of sets of audience qualifiers correlated to theclient identities and the channel identifier to data boundary manager326. Based on the channel identifier and a set of rules associated withthe channel identifier, in one embodiment, the data boundary manager 326purges (i.e., removes) PII or local/regional marketing informationpresent in the list of sets of audience qualifiers.

The ADM 318 may then forward the list of sets of audience qualifiers tothe one or more ADSs 304 a-304 n with PII or local/regional marketinginformation at least partially removed.

In one embodiment, once the data boundary manager 326 has purged PII orregional or local marketing information, there may still be certainremaining information in the purged list of sets of audience qualifiersthat may be employed by the server 302 to target the advertisementdecision to an intended audience. In one embodiment, the remaininginformation in the purged list of sets of audience qualifiers mayinclude statistics of a national market (e.g., the number of males over21 currently viewing TBS). This remaining information may be madeavailable only to the identified national network (e.g., TBS) and noother network (e.g., CBS). In one embodiment, the remaining informationmay be made available to the identified national network for a limitedperiod of time. In one embodiment, the server 302 may be configured tocharge the identified national network a premium for providing access tothe remaining information. The premium charged may be based on theparticular network, by show, by time, or by device.

For example, a national network (e.g., TBS) may desire to target ads towoman. The MSO (e.g., Comcast) may be willing to provide thisinformation to the national network for a price of 1/10^(th) of 1 pennyor a dollar per thousand impressions for every data stream that includesmetadata that includes the sex of the viewer. This information would notbe made available to another national network (e.g., Discovery channel)because the second network has not agreed to pay these fees.

In another embodiment, the server 302 may be configured to storeremaining information about the intended audience that includesinformation that identifies a market associated with a regional or localservice provider. This information may be provided to the identifiednational network in exchange for providing compensation to the regionalor local service provider.

In one embodiment, the server 302 requests an advertisement decisionbased on the placement opportunity identified. More particularly, theserver 302, on request from the CDN 306, transmits to the one or moreADSs 304 a-304 n or VAST 332 an ad call for each element of the list ofaudience qualifiers remaining after purging and the channel identifier.The server 302 receives from the ADSs 304 a-304 n or VAST 332, aplurality of advertisements targeted to the list representative of theplurality of recipient signal streams associated with the identifiednetwork. The server 302 may then employ the POIS 316 to insert thetargeted ads into designated time intervals of the stream. Finally, theserver 302 transmits the stream to an end user via, e.g., a VOD pump(server) 334.

FIG. 5 illustrates a diagrammatic representation of a machine in theexemplary form of a computer system 500 within which a set ofinstructions, for causing the machine to perform any one or more of themethodologies discussed herein, may be executed. In alternativeembodiments, the machine may be connected (e.g., networked) to othermachines in a local area network (LAN), an intranet, an extranet, or theInternet. The machine may operate in the capacity of a server or aclient machine in a client-server network environment, or as a peermachine in a peer-to-peer (or distributed) network environment. Themachine may be a personal computer (PC), a tablet PC, a set-top box(STB), a personal digital assistant (PDA), a cellular telephone, a webappliance, a server, a network router, switch or bridge, or any machinecapable of executing a set of instructions (sequential or otherwise)that specify actions to be taken by that machine. Further, while only asingle machine is illustrated, the term “machine” shall also be taken toinclude any collection of machines that individually or jointly executea set (or multiple sets) of instructions to perform any one or more ofthe methodologies discussed herein.

The exemplary computer system 500 includes a processing device 502, amain memory 504 (e.g., read-only memory (ROM), flash memory, dynamicrandom access memory (DRAM) (such as synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) or RambusDRAM (RDRAM), etc.), a static memory 506 (e.g., flash memory, staticrandom access memory (SRAM), etc.), and a data storage device 518, whichcommunicate with each other via a bus 530.

Processing device 502 represents one or more general-purpose processingdevices such as a microprocessor, central processing unit, or the like.More particularly, the processing device may be complex instruction setcomputing (CISC) microprocessor, reduced instruction set computer (RISC)microprocessor, very long instruction word (VLIW) microprocessor, orprocessor implementing other instruction sets, or processorsimplementing a combination of instruction sets. Processing device 502may also be one or more special-purpose processing devices such as anapplication specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a field programmablegate array (FPGA), a digital signal processor (DSP), network processor,or the like. Processing device 502 is configured to execute the server302, communicatively connected for performing the operations and stepsdiscussed herein.

Computer system 500 may further include a network interface device 508.Computer system 500 also may include a video display unit 510 (e.g., aliquid crystal display (LCD) or a cathode ray tube (CRT)), analphanumeric input device 512 (e.g., a keyboard), a cursor controldevice 514 (e.g., a mouse), and a signal generation device 516 (e.g., aspeaker).

Data storage device 518 may include a machine-readable storage medium(or more specifically a computer-readable storage medium) 520 having oneor more sets of instructions 522 (e.g., the server 302) embodying anyone or more of the methodologies of functions described herein. Theserver 302 may also reside, completely or at least partially, withinmain memory 504 and/or within processing device 502 during executionthereof by computer system 500; main memory 504 and processing device502 also constituting machine-readable storage media. The server 302 mayfurther be transmitted or received over a network 526 via networkinterface device 508.

Machine-readable storage medium 520 may also be used to store the devicequeue manager logic persistently. While machine-readable storage medium520 is shown in an exemplary embodiment to be a single medium, the term“machine-readable storage medium” should be taken to include a singlemedium or multiple media (e.g., a centralized or distributed database,and/or associated caches and servers) that store the one or more sets ofinstructions. The term “machine-readable storage medium” shall also betaken to include any medium that is capable of storing or encoding a setof instruction for execution by the machine and that causes the machineto perform any one or more of the methodologies of the presentinvention. The term “machine-readable storage medium” shall accordinglybe taken to include, but not be limited to, solid-state memories, andoptical and magnetic media.

The components and other features described herein can be implemented asdiscrete hardware components or integrated in the functionality ofhardware components such as ASICs, FPGAs, DSPs or similar devices. Inaddition, these components can be implemented as firmware or functionalcircuitry within hardware devices. Further, these components can beimplemented in any combination of hardware devices and softwarecomponents.

Some portions of the detailed descriptions are presented in terms ofalgorithms and symbolic representations of operations on data bitswithin a computer memory. These algorithmic descriptions andrepresentations are the means used by those skilled in the dataprocessing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their workto others skilled in the art. An algorithm is here, and generally,conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of steps leading to a desiredresult. The steps are those requiring physical manipulations of physicalquantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take theform of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored,transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It hasproven convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, torefer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters,terms, numbers, or the like.

It should be borne in mind, however, that all of these and similar termsare to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and aremerely convenient labels applied to these quantities. Unlessspecifically stated otherwise, as apparent from the above discussion, itis appreciated that throughout the description, discussions utilizingterms such as “enabling”, “transmitting”, “requesting”, “identifying”,“querying”, “retrieving”, “forwarding”, “determining”, “passing”,“processing”, “disabling”, or the like, refer to the action andprocesses of a computer system, or similar electronic computing device,that manipulates and transforms data represented as physical(electronic) quantities within the computer system's registers andmemories into other data similarly represented as physical quantitieswithin the computer system memories or registers or other suchinformation storage, transmission or display devices.

Embodiments of the present invention also relate to an apparatus forperforming the operations herein. This apparatus may be speciallyconstructed for the required purposes or it may comprise a generalpurpose computer selectively activated or reconfigured by a computerprogram stored in the computer. Such a computer program may be stored ina computer readable storage medium, such as, but not limited to, anytype of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, CD-ROMs andmagnetic-optical disks, read-only memories (ROMs), random accessmemories (RAMs), EPROMs, EEPROMs, magnetic or optical cards, flashmemory devices including universal serial bus (USB) storage devices(e.g., USB key devices) or any type of media suitable for storingelectronic instructions, each of which may be coupled to a computersystem bus.

The algorithms and displays presented herein are not inherently relatedto any particular computer or other apparatus. Various general purposesystems may be used with programs in accordance with the teachingsherein or it may prove convenient to construct more specializedapparatus to perform the required method steps. The required structurefor a variety of these systems will be apparent from the descriptionabove. In addition, the present invention is not described withreference to any particular programming language. It will be appreciatedthat a variety of programming languages may be used to implement theteachings of the invention as described herein.

It is to be understood that the above description is intended to beillustrative, and not restrictive. Many other embodiments will beapparent to those of skill in the art upon reading and understanding theabove description. Although the present invention has been describedwith reference to specific exemplary embodiments, it will be recognizedthat the invention is not limited to the embodiments described, but canbe practiced with modification and alteration within the spirit andscope of the appended claims. Accordingly, the specification anddrawings are to be regarded in an illustrative sense rather than arestrictive sense. The scope of the invention should, therefore, bedetermined with reference to the appended claims, along with the fullscope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method, comprising: receiving, by a programmedcomputer, a source signal stream comprising metadata and anadvertisement space; extracting from the metadata, by the programmedcomputer, personal identifiable information about an intended audienceof interest to advertisers; identifying, by the programmed computer, aplurality of audience qualifiers and a placement opportunity in theadvertisement space, wherein the identified placement opportunity isassociated with a universal unique identifier, and wherein the pluralityof audience qualifiers based in part on the personal identifiableinformation; purging, by the programmed computer, audience qualifiers ofthe plurality of audience qualifiers associated with the personalidentifiable information and not permitted for use by an advertisementdecision service to produce a plurality of permitted audiencequalifiers, wherein the purged audience qualifiers identify a marketassociated with a regional or local service provider; transmitting, bythe programmed computer, a placement request to the advertisementdecision service for the identified placement opportunity in view of theuniversal unique identifier and in view of the one or more permittedaudience qualifiers; receiving, by the programmed computer, a placementresponse comprising an advertisement placement decision in view of theuniversal unique identifier and in view of the one or more permittedaudience qualifiers; inserting the placement response into the placementopportunity; delivering the placement response to a user; and providingcompensation to the regional or local service provider from a nationalnetwork in exchange for permitting the national network to have accessto the purged audience qualifiers that identify the market associatedwith the regional or local service provider.
 2. The method of claim 1,wherein the personal identifiable information to purge is based on abusiness arrangement between a national network and a service provider.3. The method of claim 1, wherein the personal identifiable informationidentifies an individual person.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein thepersonal identifiable information is at least one of a hardware MACaddress, a name, a post office address, a subscription or an orderhistory, and a credit score.
 5. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: transmitting a private client identifier and a channelidentifier to a subscriber information service; and receiving, from thesubscriber information service, the plurality of audience qualifiersincluding the extracted information about the intended audiencecorrelated to the private client identifier and the channel identifier.6. The method of claim 1, wherein purging the personal identifiableinformation about the intended audience further comprises purgingaudience qualifiers that identify an individual person or identifies amarket associated with a regional or local service provider.
 7. Themethod of claim 1, wherein identifying a placement opportunity furthercomprises: transmitting, to the advertisement decision service or aVAST, an advertisement call for each element of the plurality ofaudience qualifiers remaining after purging and receiving, from theadvertisement decision service or the VAST, at least one advertisementtargeted to the intended audience.
 8. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising requesting an advertisement decision based on the placementopportunity identified.
 9. The method of claim 1, further comprisingobtaining the metadata from a CIS.
 10. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising obtaining an owner of the advertisement space from a sessionserver.
 11. The method of claim 1, wherein the source signal streamfurther comprises content.
 12. The method of claim 11, wherein contentcomprises video, audio, or an interactive overlay.
 13. The method ofclaim 1, wherein designated time intervals for an advertising placementopportunity in the advertisement space corresponds to breaks, pre-rolls,post-rolls, mid-rolls, interstitials, pauses, and video-on-demandrequests.
 14. A system, comprising: a memory; a processing device,coupled to the memory, the processing device to: receive a source signalstream comprising metadata and an advertisement space; extract from themetadata, using the programmed computer, personal identifiableinformation about an intended audience of interest to advertisers;identify a plurality of audience qualifiers and a placement opportunityin the advertisement space, wherein the identified placement opportunityis associated with a universal unique identifier, and wherein theplurality of audience qualifiers based in part on the personalidentifiable information; purge audience qualifiers of the plurality ofaudience qualifiers associated with the personal identifiableinformation and not permitted for use by an advertisement decisionservice to produce a plurality of permitted audience qualifiers, whereinthe purged audience qualifiers identify a market associated with aregional or local service provider; transmit a placement request to theadvertisement decision service for the identified placement opportunityin view of the universal unique identifier and in view of the one ormore permitted audience qualifiers; receive a placement responsecomprising an advertisement placement decision in view of the universalunique identifier and in view of the one or more permitted audiencequalifiers; insert the placement response into the placementopportunity; deliver the placement response to a user, and providecompensation to the regional or local service provider from a nationalnetwork in exchange for permitting the national network to have accessto the purged audience qualifiers that identify the market associatedwith the regional or local service provider.
 15. A non-transitorycomputer readable storage medium including instructions that, whenexecuted by a processing system, cause the processing system to performoperations, comprising: receiving, by a programmed computer, a sourcesignal stream comprising metadata and an advertisement space; extractingfrom the metadata, by the programmed computer, personal identifiableinformation about an intended audience of interest to advertisers;identifying, by the programmed computer, a plurality of audiencequalifiers and a placement opportunity in the advertisement space,wherein the identified placement opportunity is associated with auniversal unique identifier, and wherein the plurality of audiencequalifiers based in part on the personal identifiable information;purging, by the programmed computer, audience qualifiers of theplurality of audience qualifiers associated with the personalidentifiable information and not permitted for use by an advertisementdecision service to produce a plurality of permitted audiencequalifiers, wherein the purged audience qualifiers identify a marketassociated with a regional or local service provider; transmitting, bythe programmed computer, a placement request to the advertisementdecision service for the identified placement opportunity in view of theuniversal unique identifier and in view of the one or more permittedaudience qualifiers; receiving, by the programmed computer, a placementresponse comprising an advertisement placement decision in view of theuniversal unique identifier and in view of the one or more permittedaudience qualifiers; inserting the placement response into the placementopportunity; delivering the placement response to a user; and providingcompensation to the regional or local service provider from a nationalnetwork in exchange for permitting the national network to have accessto the purged audience qualifiers that identify the market associatedwith the regional or local service provider.
 16. The non-transitorycomputer readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the personalidentifiable information identifies an individual person.
 17. Thenon-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein thepersonal identifiable information is at least one of a hardware MACaddress, a name, a post office address, a subscription or an orderhistory, and a credit score.